We’ll start by listing the top companies/players in the game at the moment, along with their prospects, AI model developments, and investments. If the company is public, we’ll also provide our thoughts on it as an investment proposition at the moment.

This privately held AI behemoth is Sam Altman’s and Elon Musk’s baby—although Musk left in the early days when Sam was chosen as king (sorry, CEO). Most recently valued at $300 billion (2nd in the world only to SpaceX, as far as private companies go), OpenAI fired the first shot of the AI war, releasing ChatGPT 3.5 into the wild in October of 2022. And now, its o3-pro AI model sits at rank #2 in the global Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.

The company is partnered heavily with Microsoft, though they appear to be renegotiating terms as OpenAI approaches the development of AGI, or artificial general intelligence—a massive milestone that many in the AI community have hoped for (or feared) for years. And although they’ve lost quite a few researchers to poaching from Meta recently, that hasn’t stopped Altman from talking about how capable GPT 5 apparently is on comedian Theo Von’s podcast. What a world.

You cannot invest directly in OpenAI, as it’s a privately held company—but you can invest in Microsoft, who has a partnership with OpenAI and benefits greatly from its technological advancements. However, $MSFT just popped off to a new all-time-high market cap of $4 trillion this week; we’re interested in looking at smaller-market-cap plays. But for now, on to the next industry titan.

Mark Zuckerberg is nothing if not “willing to put his money where his mouth is.” Earlier this year, Meta’s Llama AI models were underperforming against the competition—and in response, Mark didn’t give his employees a pep talk or speak badly about his competitors. He just pivoted harder into AI, investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI, an AI training data company, and acqui-hiring Alexander Wang, Scale’s CEO, to help with Meta’s AI development. It didn’t stop there, though. Zuckerberg has also headhunted at least 11 AI researchers from OpenAI and other major players in an effort to build Meta Superintelligence Labs, the name for his new AI initiative. His motto seems to be: “If you can’t beat ‘em, steal their employees.”

As far as investing goes, $META just hit a new all-time-high this week after a killer earnings call, which is typically not a great time to invest. However, that new ATH hasn’t changed the fact that 86% of MarketWatch’s analysts give the stock a “buy” rating—but AltIndex’s AI model isn’t convinced; it rated $META a “hold” with a 44/100 AI Score, and highlighted some bigger opportunities in the industry (we’ll cover them further below).

In the 2010s, Google was really the only company in the conversation when it came to the cutting edge of AI research and development. The AlphaGo documentary (2017) detailed how Google DeepMind’s AI system became the first AI model to beat the #1 “go” player in the world—an accomplishment that was considered a “holy grail” of AI. Now, Google is still toward the head of the pack, but OpenAI and others have caught up and even overtaken it on some levels of performance.

All in all, Google is fairing well in the AI race. The company’s Gemini 2.5 model is tied for 3rd place in the global rankings of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Google receives massive public usage of its AI through “AI Overviews” on Google search results pages, and it certainly has the resources to keep up with the likes of Meta and OpenAI in terms of infrastructure. 82% of MarketWatch’s analysts say $GOOG is a “buy”—AltIndex gives it a “hold” with an AI Score of 57/100. 

Currently top dog in terms of AI benchmarks, xAI’s Grok 4 model has pushed its way to the podium—although it’s brought a mess of controversy with it (par for the course with a Musk company!). From Grok referring to itself as MechaHitler to seeking out Musk’s opinions to the company launching problematic AI companions, it seems the headlines are full of xAI issues every other day.

And yet, the company sits in the lead for AI model development—Grok 4 has taken rank #1 at the moment for Artificial Analysis Intelligence. Which, like Musk or not, is a testament to the talent he has hired and to his ability to prioritize key issues and catalyze massive progress at the right times.

Like its competitor OpenAI, there’s no way to invest in xAI since it’s privately held, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention it.

All the companies we’ve listed until this point have been foundational model builders—the ones making the chatbots. And Nvidia is the one making the chatbots possible. With 92% of GPU market share in Q1 of 2025, Nvidia dominates the chip industry, providing the hardware for all of the above companies.

Last month, it became the first ever company to reach a market cap of $4 trillion dollars, beating Microsoft and coming in second only to… the entire global market cap of gold. 

Could Nvidia go higher from here? Of course it could, but we’re going to talk about some “lesser-known” companies instead.

The Magnificent 7 are creating a huge wake in the AI industry—and several smaller companies are set to ride the wave. By “smaller” we mean stocks with less than $150 billion market caps. Still large, but tiny compared to the behemoths we covered earlier.

Another note: these are companies that are in the AI industry, but they aren’t necessarily building their own models—they’re providing three key “ingredients” to the AI development ecosystem: chips, compute, and energy.

These picks are from our partner AltIndex, an AI-powered stock picking platform that factors in fundamentals, technical analysis, and alternative data points to arrive at insights you might not otherwise see.

You already know it, and you may already have bought (and taken profits on) it—but AltIndex still thinks retail darling CoreWeave is a buy. For any who are unaware, Coreweave specializes in delivering high-performance computing (HPC) and GPU-accelerated workloads and it has certainly carved out a niche in the competitive cloud market for itself. At the time of its IPO filing earlier this year, Nvidia owned 6% of the company’s stock itself, which is worth over $3 billion at the time of writing.

So, why does AltIndex’s AI model see so much potential left in CoreWeave? You may have seen these stats before, but they bear repeating:

✅ YoY revenue growth: 746.26%
🙁 YoY net income loss: 84.46%
👀 QoQ EBITDA growth: 616.33%
👷 Job listings increase: 49%
😮 Reddit mentions were up 269% yesterday

AltIndex’s growth prediction: 24.6% upside over 6 months

Astera Labs doesn’t make chips itself—it leaves that to Nvidia and AMD. This company’s focus is semiconductor-based products and services, which AI companies will likely need more of as they commit more capital to chips over the coming years. According to AltIndex, Astera “has consistently positioned itself as a key player in an industry characterized by rapid advancements and high market demand.”

Here are AltIndex’s main reasons for giving Astera such a high rating:

✅ YoY revenue growth: 144.33%
👍 YoY net income growth: 134.22%
👀 QoQ EBITDA growth: 1,010.02%
😯 SMA10 is up 1.8%
AltIndex’s growth prediction: 23% upside from here over 6 months

AI can go nowhere without energy, and Renew Energy Global is developing and maintaining wind, solar, and hydro power—as well as transmission lines—in India. Earlier this year, the company became “India’s highest-rated pure-play renewable energy company” in S&P Global’s Corporate Sustainability Assessment, according to a press release.

Accolades are great, but metrics and data are stronger. Let’s look at the details:

✅ YoY revenue growth: 15.50%
🙁 YoY net income loss: 20.62%
👀 QoQ EBITDA growth: 26.37%
🖥️ Web traffic up 21%

AltIndex’s growth prediction: A modest 13.3% increase over 6 months

Hope you got value from this guide—let us know what you thought.

- Brandon and the team

The information provided in Stocks & Income is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice, investment advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. Stocks & Income is not a registered investment advisor, broker-dealer, or licensed financial planner. Always do your own research and consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions. We may hold positions in or receive compensation from the companies or products mentioned. Disclosures will be made where applicable.